GiantEV's A2B Metro with Adaptto Mini-E

This is my first build thread, although I've had several builds over the years. I found a used A2B Metro on Craigslist a year or two ago. The guy just let it sit outside the whole time he had it, so needless to say it was in rough shape when I found it. But I ended up buying it for $50, which I thought was a pretty good deal, knowing that I could just throw a new motor, controller and batteries on this sweet little frame. I tried taking apart the old motor to take a peek inside, but ended up cracking the housing in the process, probably because it had been out in the rain and snow for who knows how many seasons. I picked up a used Crystalyte HS3548 that I believe once belonged to our very own Neptronix. I had a 18FET Infineon controller, a 12S Lipo pack, and a CAv3 that I put on the bike. Running it at 40A battery at 12S made for a pretty good little ride. I couldn't order the A2B pannier rack from anyone I tried, so I ended up welding my own rack to hold my battery pack and panniers, which works great for my 12 mile commute to work. I'd been using a Thunder 1220 charger with a HobbyKing 12V power supply to do my charging, which worked fine except for the annoying beeping sound the charger made when it finished. I would have to come check on my battery pack at work to see if it was done charging so I wouldn't drive my co-workers crazy with the constant beeping of the charger when it finished. Part of my commute is over a bridge that doesn't have a bike lane, so I'm forced to ride in the slow lane with cars that are going way faster than the posted 35mph speed limit. Going up the bridge with this setup I could only maintain high 20's (usually around 27-28mph), which put my slower than those actually going the speed limit.

About this time, I got interested in the Adaptto controllers. I could solve both my problems by getting this controller that would charge without annoying beeping, would give me more speed, especially with 20S, and I would get all the other features that the Adapttos have. So I bought a Mini-E, thinking this is my commuter bike and I'm more interested in range than big power. I just got it put together last night and took it for a quick spin. I tweaked a few settings on the controller since then and took it for another ride today. I was a little disappointed at first with the acceleration, but realized that I'm probably missing the current spikes that the Infineon gave me. I also am having trouble with the controller overheating, which is concerning since it isn't particularly warm out today at 49 F (9.4 C). I had the controller inside my enclosure yesterday, but it was overheating even faster than today with it mounted on my rear rack. It looks like I need to find a spot where it is getting direct airflow. Again, with the controller overheating in these cool temperatures in November, I'm concerned with how much it will overheat in the summer when the outside temperature nears 100 F. So far, I'm thinking I might have been better off with the Max-E, since it runs cooler at the same power levels, but we'll see how it runs with some better airflow on the controller. I'll probably run the controller with lower power settings eventually, but for now I'm trying to see what kind of performance I can squeeze out of it.

My HS3548 is mounted in a 20" wheel with a moped tire.

Old setup:
12S Lipo (6 Nanotechs)
18FET Infineon
40A battery / 80A phase
Top Speed: 32mph on the flat with a full charge

New setup:
20S Lipo (20 Turnigy 4S Hardpacks set up as 20S4P for 20Ah)
Adaptto Mini-E
Boost setting at 48.7 battery / 126 phase (Highest they will go)
Top Speed: 38.7mph on a fairly flat road with a fresh charge

Top speed is higher, but acceleration is less now. I have OVS at 0 still until I get a temp sensor installed in my motor. Running firmware RC9d, so it doesn’t appear that a firmware upgrade will help speed at all because the RC9e firmware update seems to address mostly 2WD issues.

I set the speed ratio to 69.4, which I got from calculating the circumference of a 20" wheel, thinking it's close enough for now until I can get out the tape measure and roll out the actual circumference. That got me pretty close, with the Adaptto "Stats" screen saying I went 4.0 miles and my GPS saying 4.1 miles. Interestingly though, the main screen of the Adaptto shows "3" for my trip, so not sure why it didn't roll over to "4" when the next screen shows "4.0" as my trip distance. My max speed on the Adaptto was 36.7mph and on my GPS 38.7mph, so if I trust my GPS then I can calculate my Adaptto speed ratio setting to be 73.182.

Handling is much improved now that my batteries are in the enclosure I made. The A2B Metro has this great area for such an enclosure. In hindsight I would have probably made the enclosure a little smaller, but at the time I was trying to maximize enclosed space. With all of these batteries and the weight of the enclosure the bike is definitely heavier (haven't weighed it yet), but it handles much better with the batteries in this location versus on the rear rack. I was going to upgrade the rear suspension, but the suspension feels so much better now that I might skip that for now.

As for upgrades to the A2B Metro, I already mentioned the custom rear rack, but there is also the following:
- Cloud 9 Seat (Super comfortable, especially compared to the original seat)
- Vuelta 60 tooth 110BCD chainring (Let's me pedal at a reasonable pace up to around 23mph)
- Origin 8 110BCD crank arms (Needed new arms to work with the 110BCD chainring)
- BB7 Brake on front with 185mm rotor (Upgrading to 203mm soon but need to keep the 185 on there for now so I can use this front wheel on another bike that can only fit 185mm)
- BB7 Brake on rear with 203mm rotor (Very easy to lock up the rear wheel)
- Bell (A must for bike path riding)
- Custom torque arms I welded (A must with the good region of the Adaptto)
- Custom enclosure I welded to hold batteries, BMS, DC/DC converter
- Ortlieb panniers (Tough and waterproof, great for commuting)

To-Do List:
- Mount controller where it gets better airflow
- Route wiring through enclosure
- Build lid for enclosure
- Paint / powdercoat enclosure, lid, torque arms, rear rack
- Front light (already have, just need to install)
- DC/DC Converter (Need to test the ones I have to see if they will work at 84V)

Anyways, here is a picture I took on my ride today. Not much to look at yet but will look better once I tidy up the wires and add some paint, once I figure out a good spot for the controller. Don't mind the pink foam inside the enclosure. 8)

Reserved

Reserved

Great to see your thread with new electronics!
Regarding the heat issue. It could be wrong Angle settings for Halls. And if you have wrong settings for your motor in this menu it could feel sluggish

I will refer to this post:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61183&p=963200#p963139

And about acceleration being slower compared to infineon:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61429&start=100#p971742

Thanks for the links, Alex!

Here are my settings:
Angle corr.: -9.28
Angle corr2: +0.00
Ind timing: 0366uS
PWR timing: +0.51

My Angle corr. settings are definitely outside of the +5 to -5 range.

I saw that some people have tried Autodetect again with some success so I think I'll give that a try tomorrow to see if my numbers change and try to change the angle manually if that doesn't work.

Ok, I couldn't wait until tomorrow. I tried the Autodetect again with the following results:

Angle corr.: -5.98
Angle corr2: +0.00
Ind timing: 0334uS
PWR timing: +0.51

Autodetect took less time to run this time (3 minutes 8 seconds the first time, only 2 minutes 30 seconds this time). These numbers look promising, and are a lot closer to what you and everyone else is getting. I'll report back tomorrow on how the test ride goes.

By the way, isn't it strange that we have the same Angle correction values and similar Ind timing values, even though I am running a HS3548 and you're running a 54xx or 53xx motor?

Just got back from a test ride with the outside temps around the same as yesterday, driving the same exact route for a good comparison, and with the controller still mounted on my rear rack.

The temps of the controller were much better this time with the Angle corr. set to -5.98, but there was still over heating that caused the Mini-E to reduce power and even forced me to stop at one point (only 2 miles into my ride). Then I changed Angle corr. to -2.47 and the temperature never rose above one tick mark on the display, which also meant that the power was not reduced by the Mini-E. Excited with these results, I adjusted the Angle corr. value after that back towards the original value because even though it wasn't overheating anymore, there was a reduction in the overall power of the bike, so I thought I could get some performance back by fine tuning the Angle corr. value even more.

However, by this point my batteries were very low, so I think that was part of why I wasn't seeing temperature spikes and why the performance was decreased. I couldn't even get the bike to overheat even when I went back to -5.98. I'll try it again after I recharge the batteries with an Angle corr. value of somewhere between -5.98 and -2.47 to try to find that sweet spot between good performance and overheating. Keep in mind that I have my settings in Boost mode maxed out and I am riding at full throttle during these tests. During these runs I'm getting around 62 Wh/mile with top speeds around 30-40mph. As a comparison, I drove one mile to see how low the Wh/mile could be while keeping it under 20mph and the best I could manage so far was 45 Wh/mile. All this on brand new LiPo battery packs.

For those who are curious, these are some of the options for setting the Angle corr. (in degrees) on the Mini-E, at least on my current setup:
-5.98
-5.28
-4.58
-3.87
-3.17
-2.47
-1.76
-1.06
-0.36
+0.34

I'm willing to tweak other values to get better performance if anyone has any educated suggestions.

Well, those numbers I provided was not mine.
It takes a bit of knowledge to tune this controller right. You can find lots of info from me and others in the Adaptto owners thread.
Wrong controller settings often gives you overheated controller, overheated motor and bad performance.
Here is a short guide on how you tune your motor.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27911&p=918729#p918729

You can also read about this(more details) in the manual.
And dont forget that you have a mini-e(only 6FETs) so pushing 50Amps with 20s could easily be over 4kW of power. So if you push it hard it will get hot

Yeah I just came back from another ride and I think I just need to not run it full tilt at max settings. At the same outside temperature I wasn't making any progress by changing the Angle corr. setting. I'm at 48.7A battery and 127A phase right now so I think I'll try bumping it down to 40.0A battery and 115A phase. Like you said, I'm pushing this little 6-FET controller really hard. Every ride I've taken so far has shown a max wattage of 4KW 8)

I've gotta say again though that I'm really happy with this Adaptto system. I love how easy it is to charge. I love how you can change the settings on the display without a computer. I love how quiet the motor is. My motor is running cooler with the Adaptto than it did with the Infineon. It's a great system.

Hi,

My A2B Metro died a few weeks ago, so am thinking of getting a replacement motor. - I noticed you got a Crystalyte HS3548, which appears to have a 135mm dropout. the A2B has 150mm dropouts - how did you get around this?

Thanks

I have clamping torque arms and put one of them inside the dropouts up against the wheel, which takes up the extra space. Even with my fat moped tire there is still plenty of room in the swingarm. I'll see if I can post some pictures this weekend. It actually works well to put a clamping torque arm inside the dropout on the derailleur side if you want to keep your derailleur because the torque arm design is simple, allowing you to use the bolts from the factory torque arm. The whole wheel is offset slightly but it doesn't affect handling or tire wear.

Cool bike.

lester12483 said:

Cool bike.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Well, I've been out riding a few times each week and all I can say is I wish I got the Adaptto sooner. This system is awesome!

I took it out for a ride on a fresh charge and hit a top speed of 58mph (GPS only said 53mph, but it's a cheap iPhone app so I'm not sure how reliable it is). Wow, what a ride at 4kW!! Motor and controller were warm but not hot. I decided to turn down the settings from maximum and the bike is still a lot of fun. No more overheating issues either.

Made a few changes recently as well:
- New lid for battery box
- Mounted controller on lid of battery box
- Added a right-hand throttle to the left side of the handlebar and now have variable regen
- New throttle also has a switch that I wired into the brakes so I can keep the brakes enabled when I need to
- Cleaned up the wiring

The lid is nice because the internals are now protected from the elements and the bike looks more complete. Once I'm done tweaking I'll powder coat the parts that are bare metal now.

The variable region is great! If I pull on the brakes the regen comes on pretty strong (which I like), so it's nice to be able to roll the left throttle gradually and have fine control of how hard the regen is stopping the bike. I'm going to buy a new left-hand throttle soon which should feel better.

This bike is set up to be my commuter, and it's perfect for that purpose (I need to keep up with traffic on parts of my commute for safety reasons), but I'm already thinking of my next build. Definitely a Max-E and probably a Cromotor. After riding around at 4kW I am excited to see what 10kW+ feels like!

Anyways, here are some pictures:

Hi.

My electric bike is very similar to your equipment:
20S4P 20Ah Lipo (20 Turnigy 4S Hardpacks) placed in a backpack
Adaptto Mini-E (firmware version - 9d, normal profile - 40A battery / 100A phase)
HS3540 in a 20" wheel
Top Speed: 87,5kph

I have the following controller settings Mini-E:
Angle corr.: -1.59
Angle corr2: +0.00
Ind timing: 0526uS
PWR timing: +0.51

Yes, our setups are very similar!

I noticed that your battery settings show 1919 Wh (1735+184). If you’re using 20 of these batteries then shouldn’t your total Wh should be closer to 1480 Wh like mine?

Looks like you’re getting 54.4 mph (87.5 kph) top speed. Was this on a flat road or downhill?

I went for a ride on a full charge with 40A/100A settings and could only hit 45.0mph (72.4kph). I tried another ride on a full charge with 48.7A/126A settings and could still only hit 46.9mph (75.5kph). On that last run I peaked at 4.6KW! I took another look at the route where I hit 58mph and realized I was on a decline, so that’s where I got the extra speed from. On my new speed test I recorded speed and elevation both directions to account for any incline/decline.

I was looking on ebikes.ca and saw that the KV for your HS3540 is 10.4 RPM/V and the KV for my HS3548 is 13 RPM/V, so by just swapping out motors mine should have a higher top speed. I think mine is slower because my controller settings aren’t optimal right now, my bike has a very heavy frame, battery case, and rear rack, and I’m a big guy so my poor bike is trying to lug me around. I’ll report back on my new top speed once I get the bike tuned better.

Here are my current settings:
Angle corr.: +1.74
Angle corr2: +0.00
Ind timing: 0334uS
PWR timing: +0.51

I just barely got a temp sensor installed yesterday, so I’m going to work on tuning the bike this weekend. Have you tuned yours like it says in the manual?

What is your OVS timing set to? I’m set at zero until I get the motor tuned well.

It’s very nice having a temp sensor installed on this motor finally. It looks like the temp limit is set to 355F (179.4C), so I’m going to lower that down to 230F (110C) to keep the temps down. I got used to reading my temps in C, but since I am using mph the temps are shown in F on the Mini-E, so I’m trying to get reacquainted with acceptable temps in F.

248F=120.0C
239F=115.0C
230F=110.0C
221F=105.0C
212F=100.0C
203F= 95.0C
194F= 90.0C

Yeap you def need to up your OVS to hit higher speeds.

Yes, my battery as you (1480 Wh), but I after his charge was not made in the controller full reset.

I have reached the maximum speed when turned on the profile boost (50A battery / 120A phase), the road was almost flat (you can see my video).

My configure OVS = 7, temp limit I did 130C.

My bike is pretty easy (22kg + 10kg battery) and I'm not very heavy (my weight is 72kg).

[youtube]g35OHdfBozo[/youtube]

Great video, Pavel, it reminds me of some I've seen from andreym. You must have a good tune on your motor to be able to sustain those speeds for that long without overheating.

It stopped raining/snowing here, so I made some motor value adjustments like it says in the Adaptto manual and changed the following settings:

OLD
Angle corr.: +1.74
PWR timing: +0.51

NEW
Angle corr.: -1.76
PWR timing: +0.16

The motor seemed to run quieter and have good acceleration with these settings, so I went for a test run on a full charge with OVS set to 7. The motor overheated right away and could only hit 44.3mph (71.3 kph) max speed. Once the motor got hot it kept staying in limp mode with limited power. Usually the bike doesn't overheat this quickly, so I'm going to change the settings back to what they were before and try OVS set to 7 again, and this time turn up the motor overtemp value.

266F=130.0C
257F=125.0C
248F=120.0C
239F=115.0C
230F=110.0C

I'm at 230F max motor temp now, so I may try 248F to see how quickly the motor overheats before I jump up to 266F. My temp sensor is right up against the windings. I used Permatex Ultra Black, which has a max temperature range of 500F (260C), so it should hold even at 266F (130C). I'm just worried about the hall sensors and magnets. I'd like this setup to be reliable. I'm only testing max speed just out of curiosity.

By the way, the controller doesn't seem to be overheating anymore now that I moved it on top of the bike with the metal lid acting as a heatsink.

I know andreym, are we sometimes riding on e-bikes.

Your motor more speed than mine, so it overheats faster.
Try for yourself the firmware version - 7c, must be heated less.

You should try mxus 3000 motor. It is cheap and way better than your current one. I actually have a few, need to test them but the weather is not to my liking.
Have you tried PWR 1,5-2? 0-0,5 just doesn not work good on my motor.
Your battery case is bizarrely big, Does your batteries take up so much space?

I tried increasing PWR but the motor was 10mph slower! Back at 0.51 for now. I still think I need to tweak some settings but it's stable for now as long as I keep it below 4kW.

My battery box isn't full, even with those 20 lipos batteries, so yes, I could have made the box smaller, but I'm planning on keeping my DC/DC converter in there, along with any other electronics that I might want to store in there in the future.

I've been looking at those MXUS 3000 motors. I think a 3T motor would be good since I'm using a 20" wheel, so I can get some more speed, don't you agree?

Yup 20" 3T is perfect for you.

Pavel__ said:

Hi.

My electric bike is very similar to your equipment:
20S4P 20Ah Lipo (20 Turnigy 4S Hardpacks) placed in a backpack
Adaptto Mini-E (firmware version - 9d, normal profile - 40A battery / 100A phase)
HS3540 in a 20" wheel
Top Speed: 87,5kph

I have the following controller settings Mini-E:
Angle corr.: -1.59
Angle corr2: +0.00
Ind timing: 0526uS
PWR timing: +0.51

Click to expand...

Is it a 26" fork you are using on this 20" folding bike?

cwah said:

Is it a 26" fork you are using on this 20" folding bike?

Click to expand...

Yes, I use a 26 "on this 20" folding bike.
Not to change the geometry I have replaced the rear shock for a long (125mm->165mm).

Here you can see the photo as it was and as I did later.